Watchmen: The Movie That Made Wanner Bros. Believe Zack Synder Can Create a DC Film Universe

I'm currently 18 years old and will start college this coming fall. Favorite shows are The Office, Daredevil, and Last Week Tonight with Joh

I don't know why it said "Watchmen 2". This is a review on the 2009 film adaption.

Watchmen is the story about a former team of superheroes living in a fictional 80's America that had the U.S. winning the Vietnam War, Nixon having multiple re-elections, and on the edge of Nuclear War. It begins with one of the members, The Comedian, getting murder from an unknown person. From there, we follow the remaining heroes continuing on their lives with the effect of The Comedian's death and the problems that will come a head for the heroes. As you may know, this is base on the graphic novel (comic mini series) of the same name by Alan Moore. What you may not know is that a film adaption for Watchmen was in development for a long period of time. At one point, Terry Gilliam ( Director of films "12 Monkeys" and "Brazil") was consider to direct the film, but, however, quit because the film was un-filmable due to it complex story, according to him. With the success on the box office for his adaption of "300", Zack Synder was hire by Warner Bros. to film Watchmen. After the release, Watchmen left a split decision between both fans and critics whether they like it or not, for my case I did not like the film. There were a few aspects that I did like, so let's begin from there:

The Good

Personally, the best scene of the whole movie was the opening montage with the Minutemen, a team prior to the Watchmen, beginnings and age on to the Watchmen with the Bob Dylan's song "The Times They Are a-Changin". For anybody who haven't seen the film, which maybe a few, I would recommend that scene alone as it is able to explain you everything you need to know about the film and the kind of world that you will be entering in three minutes. For me, I wish there were more quiet scenes, like this one, than having your characters talk a lot. Beside from that, this was a great scene to watch and you can tell the passion that Synder has on the story in this original scene of the novel. Another aspect I like was the effects. It's not ground breaking in any means but it gives a good edge to the film. For example, the film could have switch out Rorschach mask with different ones to make it look like it's changing. Instead, there's a visual effect given to the mask to make it look like it's moving by face expressions, which that little detail is kinda cool to see. Also, good soundtrack.

Now let's talk what I found just ok.

The Neutral

For acting performances, I found it just ok. They were not bad or anything, but they just did not stand out. If I have to say who gave the best performance, I would say Jackie Earle Haley as Rorschach. However, I'm torn whether I wanted to see Rorschach as how he was portray. When I first saw the film, I thought, Rorschach is giving a Christian Bale's voice, this made him cool and fierce. When I look back to the comic, I never saw him having a gruff voice, but whether a calm and patience kind of sound, like The Question in the Justice League Animated Series. The reason I thought of that because of the prison scene. When I read that part, I only saw Rorschach tired of the world and having no humanity left, which made me sympathizes more about him. In the film, he play it out more as that you should fear me. I don't know, I wish I saw more like the comics. Another thing I did not care for is the set. I wish there was a purple night sky or more yellow colors in the set design. What we get was fine. It was not horribly mute, but wish a little more.

And finally:

The Bad

I'm just going be honest, I was just bored for the whole film. The film was very slow pace and I wish it would speed up a little. For example, when I got to Dr Manhattan's interview, I look how far I'm on the film and I saw that it was just 30 minutes. 30 minutes! I'm just barely a fifth into the movie. A good example of a movie that was long, but kept me interested was "Mad Max Fury Road", which kept a certain beat to the film that did not feel like it was drag on. On my first try, I gave up watching when Dr Manhattan's origins are reveal. I thought the whole time I really do not care for anybody in this film. I do not care who kill The Comedian, I do not care about the romance that is happening, and I do not care how Dr Manhattan is causing people to have cancer. I try multiple times, but succeeded only once. I made one mistake before watching the movie is that I did not read the graphic novel. My thoughts on the graphic novel it's great. I got a good understanding of the story, so I thought I can enjoy the movie. So I try watching again and I still did not like the film. I wanted to like the film and I did not quite understand why some people like it until now. The main problem of the film, in my opinion, is that it's too close to the graphic novel. I'm not saying adaptions of books is a bad thing. In fact, we want to see the movie has some close ties to the film, but when it's too close that's no good either. Every image or line of dialogue from the novel, it appears in the film. This lead me to think how many original ideas where in the film and I could think of one, the opening montage. They could have more quiet moments, for example Dr Manhattan's origin scene. Imagine if they took out all the dialogue out and place a song like " A Day In The Life" by the Beatles. In my mind, that would work more effective than him just talking. Which the dialogue works in the comic because there something you need some explain to what is going. It does not work for a movie because you are able to show emotions and that works more effectively than just words. Other than that, I thought there was no need for this film. The movie only express how Snyder and the writer's took from the story, but it's kinda pointless to watch since you got the novel to read. I don't blame Zack Synder on how he made the film either because I do agree with Terry Gilliam that it is hard to make a film out of it. All the parts in the graphic novel are shown to be important to the story, which makes it tough on what to focus and how much time does it get to be focus on. Alan Moore provided Watchmen too much stuff to make a movie out of it, but to little to make franchise out of it either, which makes it nearly impossible for anyone to make a good movie out of it. The only possible way to make a live adaption of Watchmen that could be good, in my opinion, would be in a mini-series. That way you could be able to tell the story that does not feel force, slowly pace, and could put some creative ideas in it. As of now we this version to watch.

My final verdict is that I would skip the movie and read the graphic novel. I'm Andrew Barren, signing out.

What did you think about Watchmen? Leave a comment down

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